I've just installed it. Frankly, to my ears Special mode plays the best. The sound is coherent - most detailed but without any harshness. Could it be any better than this, Peter? How deep would it go into a record? Right now I am able to hear so much background noises, that I'm actually scared. Is it still music that I am listening to or rather some kind of freaking analysis...

Haha, you may recall my topic from a few days back about re-enstating Anti Imaging upsampling (filtering) and how it again occurred to me how black the background was. And this is a virtue, I have learned. Until I after a few days went back to KS and (in my case) Adaptive Mode, and I really didn't know what I was hearing for background noises. So, or our "black" never has been the good idea, or back then this was about different noise which doesn't belong there.

There was a time that brushes were pereceived as strange noises, if you could hear them at all. Right now they blast through the room.Have things changed, or have they ...

Day before yesterday I really was in a state of once again posting about that it couldn't be better because I'm perceiving plain reality.I didn't post it because I have learned that there will always be some new idea to improve, and I guess it never stops. Well, I hope it doesn't or otherwise the fun will be gone.In any case, I am not done with KS yet. There are more possibilities ...

I've been comparing Adaptive and Special mode. There is no doubt - Special Mode is superior! In adaptive it's impossible to hear details which are perfectly "visible" in Special mode. Especially when it comes to background details

I also prefer special mode over adaptive mode. In my system, adaptive mode is leaner and may be a touch cleaner but through special mode, I hear more bloom, string instrument has nicer decay and richer sound. However, in 09y-7 version, I can set Q1 as low as -4 and increase in increment of 1. IN 09y-8 version in special mode, the lowest Q1 setting available was 7 then it go up to 15, 45 etc. In adaptive mode, Q1 go down to 0 with iincrement interval of 1. Also at Q1 of 7 in 097-08, I get a bit of tick and pop but under 09y-7, I am at Q1 level of 0 with no problem so far.

Although I am running y7 on xp, I think that the phrase "black background" can mean either of two things - one good, the other bad!

With a natural sounding recording, you can hear the spaces between the musicians - that is the acoustic of the space is part of the soundstage along with the musicians-- when you hear only the musicians with nothing between them, then a black background is actually missing ambient and low level information

when the black background means that there are no artifacts or distortion, then it is good!

I finally did some quiet listening of y-8. I found out that KS/adaptive mode with Q1=1 and buffers 1024 sounds the best that my system ever has.

1024 latency is the minimum for me to not hear distorion or "too many buffer errors". While with Q1=4 i could go as low as 256, the above combination sounds BETTER, more foot-tapping. I lowered Q1 after looking at Peter last signature I generally agree with him about what sounds best.

I have to say that the new PSU could be somewhat related to this, but I surely am not putting back the old psu

Will experiment comparing adaptive to special mode with the above settings.

Enjoying 09-y8! Took awhile to find the ideal settings but well worth it. I am hearing more information off recordings than I thought was possible. Arc Prediction more detailed than Anti-image but the Anti-Image is a bit warmer and fuller sounding which I prefer for the few tracks I heard. I think I'll be going back and forth between the two settings depending on the music material. The y-8 version is the most stable with my laptop so far and no error messages.

Here are the settings that work best for me without the slo-mo static.

Adaptive or Special Mode? Boy would I like to have more problems like this; they're both fantastic. I do think, for the moment, I'm tending more toward adaptive, where it seems one is several steps closer to the stage. Adaptive is a cleaner, less "warm" sound but I seem to hear more of the detail and richness of Eva's voice in Fields of Gold. And the cleaner sound is not harsh, just more "present". Two days ago, using my M-Audio Audiophile usb for usb/spdif conversion, I know I would have found adaptive mode too harsh or too digital sounding. Not so today. I highly recommend the Hiface if you are on a budget.

OK, yesterday when I wrote previous post I was judging about sound via wireless headphones - good ones, the regular way I listen to the music. This morning played several albums via speakers and can confirm that to me SPECIAL mode sounds better than ADAPTIVE. It is more warm, more detailed, very crisp and clear and the sound stage is very 3-D. So far it is best coming out from XX via my speakers, will see how it plays with ArcPred when my HiFace arrives.